Natural dyes

I have spent much of the summer growing dye plants in tubs in front of the house. Some of them are specific dye plants such as coreopsis, dyer's chamomile, madder, lady's bedstraw and cosmos orange. These all give reliable colour and in beautiful shades. The second photo shows cosmos orange which is a beautiful plant in its own right. I have been processing this dye in a flask which is a really quick and easy way to dye small quantities. I put the fibres and threads in the flask along with the dye materials, add hot water and mordant and give a short stir. I then put the lid on the flask and leave it for one or two days. I am always amazed at how wool fibres and threads take up colour differently from silks. The results are shown in the third photo.

As well as specific dye plants I have also grown many others which give dye colours such as nasturtiums, chrysanthemums and pansies. The bees have had a wonderful summer visiting these plants and it is delightful to spend time with them all.

Later in the summer I dyed with buddleia flowers and stems. Quite a few of the flowers on the sprays were dead which gave a surprisingly strong orange colour to the dyed fibres and threads, the result can be seen in the photo where they are drying on the washing line. The addition of stems and branches to the dye pot also will help colour fastness due to the tannin content. As well as merino wool I buy many different types of fleeces from farmers in the Isle of Man where I live. At present I am using blue faced Leicester, romney and Lincoln longwool fleeces which I clean, dye, card and make into my many felted and stitched items . A large selection of these can be sen on my website patktextiles.com

Now that autumn is here I will be dyeing with tree leaves, branches, bark and cones. I will write about this in my next post.

 

Rewilding

 I live on a farm and have taken over the one and a half acres of the field next to the house that used to have calves grazing there or potatoes planted in it. 22 years ago I began the process of turning a third of it into a forest garden; it now contains over 60 fruit and nut trees, very many berry plants, herbs and shrubs as well as ground cover. It is a haven for wildlife with 30 different bird species, frogs, moths, butterflies and too any insect species to count.The rest of the area is now allowed to rewild itself by self seeding of trees and plants. I am documenting the progression of the rewilding. Firstly brambles and bracken covered all of the space but in the last 4 years 100 ash trees have self seeded there and are now a considerable size. They are loved by the birds and insects. Several  sycamore trees are getting established as well as scrub willow. Wild flowers are now growing in the grass area which is mown every autumn; cow parsley, red campion, meadow cranesbill and trefoils started to appear this summer but the most awe inspiring sight is that of the vast area of rosebay willowherb as seen below. There are many thousands of honey and bumblebees gathering nectar from it. I am a textile artist and produce natural dyes from the plants in my garden. These are used to dye wool and

this is felted to be made into items for my online shop patktextiles.com

Cards depicting herbs

 I am intending to make a new line in my online shop. These will be cards depicting herbs, many of which I grow in my forest garden. I also started a very popular herb group in the Isle of Man U3A but have had to step back from it reecently due to health reasons. I use the herbs for many puposes, for medicines, food, dyes but mainly to attract wildlife to my garden. I have around 60 fruit trees and very many different varieties of fruit bushes which the birds, wasps and bees like to share in. 

Due to the cold weather we have had in the last few weeks I have been throwing wild bird seeds on the frozen ground and now have 4 hen pheasants, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, robins, sparrows and dunnocks coming to my whistle as they know that there is plenty of food to go round. The bird hangers have peanuts, fat balls and sunflower seeds.

The card below is a depiction of Echinacea made from wet felted merino wools and mounted on a deckle edged card. It is for sale in my online shop patktextiles.com

New Nature Based Online Shop

 I have just opened my new online shop selling my Art and Homeware designs based on nature. I have a good selection of cards and coasters which have images taken from my original textile designs. Some of the cards are printed to give high quality, colourful images whilst the others are handmade using felted wools of various breeds, some rare. The cards are then hand and or machine stitched and may have embellishments. The coasters have high definition images of my textile art. I also sell a variety of one off original wallhangings several are made from stitched, dyed calico and khadi paper. Others are wet felted using a variety of wools and several have plant dyed fibres. I do a lot of natural dyeing using plants from my large forest garden.

To access the online shop go to patktextiles.com    

Stitched birds

 I now have coasters of several stitched birds on handmade felt. They are chaffinch, great tit and blue tit. I have just finished 2 new designs; a puffin and a robin which I am going to get made up into both cards and coasters. I am very excited about my new venture and am getting a lot of responses and feedback already regarding my new products. I will continue making bird hangings as I love to get the character of each bird that I stitch. I will probably do some birds of prey next.

I love listening to music as I stich and at present I am listening to Chopin nocturnes. I have just had a good friend make some bird boxes for me, there are 2 smaller boxes for blue and great tits These

boxes are attached to trees in my forest garden. he also made an owl box which is in one of our sheds, Hopefully we may be lucky and have it occupied by a bard owl. Attached are the images of my latest work.

Bird coasters

 I had a very enjoyable time yesterday at the Christmas craft fair at the Corrin hall, Peel. I met so many lovely people including some friends that I had not seen for a long time. As well as selling my usual stitched textiles I brought along my new product lines. I have many good images from work that I have created, many of them now sold. I have had 3 of these printed as quality cards. The items that I am most excited about are the new coasters. they were much admired yesterday, the ones that sold particularly well were the ones with images of birds. As each image is from a photograph of my work I am now setting about to create a new body of work based on birds, flowers and butterflies which can be be sold as the original textile or as coasters. I am hoping that before too long I may have a website up and running and I will keep you posted regarding this.

Computer designs

 I now have a Wacom One tablet which connects to my laptop. It is very easy to design on using the pen. There are many options to use on it including oils, gouache, indian ink and watercolour as well as many  interesting special effects. It is a very quick way of producing a new design and I have uploaded images here of a computer design and a small wall hanging that I have just completed based on it. I also use Photoshop Elements where there are many options to digitally alter a photograph or a textile design. These include shear, twist, wave and zigzag resulting in very abstracted images which can be a jumping off point for a new design.